Senior Vice President
Sonia Smith has served as a communications advisor for a range of Fortune 500 clients, universities, government institutions, and non-profit organizations. Before joining CLS, her work ran the gamut from managing communications around high-profile media investigations, Justice Department inquiries, product liability, environmental, pharmaceutical, and anti-trust litigation, to strategic risk analysis for a high priority U.S. government initiative. She has also advised political candidates and Supreme Court justices in Latin America.
She has extensive journalism and broadcasting experience, after working for the BBC, ITN and CNN, covering major news as a television foreign correspondent in Europe, Japan, Latin America and the United States. Under her maiden name, Sonia Ruseler, she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tokyo bubble economy, the war against the Shining Path in Peru, as well as elections in Great Britain and Spain. As an award-winning anchor for CNN International, based in Washington D.C., Sonia interviewed world leaders and US Members of Congress on a daily basis. Her last major live broadcast was the inauguration of President George W. Bush.
Sonia graduated from Cambridge University, with a B.A. and Masters in Social and Political Sciences. She is currently completing a WineMBA at the Bordeaux École de Management, a two year executive MBA on the global wine industry. Sonia is also a Certified Sommelier from the Court of Master Sommeliers, and holds the Advanced Certificate from London’s WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust). The passion for wine begins with a vineyard at the foothills of the Andes, in Mendoza, Argentina.
Sonia has dual Argentine and Dutch nationality. She speaks Spanish, English, French, and Dutch.
